Obviously its too linear when you don't actually play the game.
Jesse was in my guild since Cata, and even he didn't really play the game.

You can't log on twice a week, only do the raid, log off, then talk about how you don't think the game is going in the right direction.

Crendor is even worse.
Jesse would bring him around all the time too.
He never pvped, never raided, never did cmodes, never did achievements, never did pet battles, never did ANYTHING.
How can you say the game is too linear if you don't actually explore it?

WoW was still linear during Vanilla, you just didn't have XXX quest telling you to go see YYY or ZZZ person/hub.

Also, I lost respect for Mr. Cox a LONG time ago.

I don't think that he meant what you describe as non-linear questing experience, but the fact that there were far more zones and campaigns to play through in classic than in any expansion. Actually, classic has more zones than all of the expansions put together.

And in all those almost-fourty zones of the first period of the game, there were zones dedicated to main campaigns, zones that main campaigns would go through and perhaps stop for a bit, and zones completely dedicated to side-questing. That's what he seems to be missing. I miss it too.

And just can't help but wonder what would have happened if equal care was given to questing and exploration as it has been given to raiding. Think how much more depth raiding encounters have nowadays compared to most of classic's; missing sandbox elements due to streamlining but still, the difference is quite big. Now imagine what would have happened if they have worked on questing and exploration as much. We would most probably be enjoying something amazing right now; questing/exploring fans that is. Just because it was one way in classic does not mean that it could not have been developed further. The point is that with questing and exploring taking a backseat to raiding and instanced content in general they haven't progressed much, and a lot of the changes are merely cosmetic, while at the same time a lot of cutting has been made, to make questing especially embarrassingly simple and easy, tailor-made for lazy gamers who dread the thought of thinking for themselves.

Instead of getting lost in a wonderful world of racial campaigns, class quests, class-specific approaches to campaigns, personal choices, mysteries and adventure we plow away like we did in 2005, just with slightly better stories and objectives. Similarly in exploration, instead of introducing trekking skills, specialised gear, survival equipment, in-depth interaction with flora and fauna, navigation through tough environments and conditions, and so many other concepts that would give the game some true exploration, we are limited to chancing upon a semi-hidden object on one place, a lucky peculiar drop off of a rare mob on another.

It's discouraging to think of what could have been done to a game of such commercial success. I can understand all the "free"-to-play, and couple-hundred-thousand subscribers-big game not putting much into advancing the genre; they either can't or don't want to run the risk, but WoW?

A thought on daily quests: refocus rep vendors from pre-intro tier upgrades to vanity rewards. Tabards, mounts, specific types of ground or flying mounts that need training you get at exalted with a rep, transmog gear, fun stuff--like the Tillers vendor. Let dailies be a respectable source of gold income and a source of slow VP gain, but unlock VP gear from rep vendors so people who don't like rep grinds won't feel as pidgeonholed into doing them to prep for Normal/Heroic intro tier.

I think he's talking about feeling like you HAD to do them, in wotlk it felt more like an option. I stopped doing dailies in wotlk and never did them again. So mind numbingly boring and repetitive I should of got the insane achievement for them.

Hes not up to date on endgame content. He admitted it himself. His opinions don't hold much weight anymore...

So you need to be a hardcore raider with all achievements just to form a general opinion of WoW on Youtube? Kinda reminds me of the PVP elitism that you can't post anything unless you're 2400 rating and multi-glad

I respect WowCrendor for his opinion but I disagree with some of them. I think he is just burnt out on WoW and the MOP storyline simply didn't click with him. I for one love LFR and it's what keeps me interested and playing along with more solo and small-group content instead of the raiding focus all the time for previous expansions.

I used to be pretty hardcore raider back in BC, but simply don't have time now due to job, family, etc. If WoW remained the same throughout all these years, I don't think I could have kept playing, and a lot of players are in the same boat as me.

Crendor is also one of the few big-name Youtubers that stuck with WoW for this long, big kudos for that. Jesse Cox stopped playing WoW, Totalbiscuit stopped playing WoW. Even though WoW is still the #1 MMO, it has gotten old and people move on. And there's nothing wrong with that. The simple fact that WoW has kept people playing for 8 years is testament that it's an amazing game.

Obviously its too linear when you don't actually play the game.
Jesse was in my guild since Cata, and even he didn't really play the game.

You can't log on twice a week, only do the raid, log off, then talk about how you don't think the game is going in the right direction.

Crendor is even worse.
Jesse would bring him around all the time too.
He never pvped, never raided, never did cmodes, never did achievements, never did pet battles, never did ANYTHING.
How can you say the game is too linear if you don't actually explore it?

This. 100% this. How can you write a quality book report if you only read the first and last 5 pages of a 1,000 page book? The answer is you can't.

90 percent of players don't play 90 percent of the game, then complain the game is boring to them.

Why not actually try the things that have been added?
THEN you have enough to form an opinion of the game.
It has changed, and MoP now adds more content in each patch than they did in all of BC.

If people actually played it they would know that.

The majority of playerbase partakes in simple LFR, casual PVP, and solo content.
If the game offers things that most people don't try or are not interested in, that's the problem with the game, not the players.

That is why Blizzard is constantly trying to remodel the game to keep WoW relevant. Sometimes it alienates a few people (like Crendor in this instance) don't like how it turns out, and that's fine. Sometimes it alienates a lot of people (like the beginning of Cata with harder dungeons), and Blizzard realizes this and makes a big U-turn.

I feel like WoWcrendor had some valid points and that Wrath was the closest we came to a perfect Xpack. BC/Vanilla were very hard and inaccessible. In Wrath anyone could get into raiding as long as they put forth a little effort and there were still plenty of guilds that never downed Arthas. Also Wrath had the amazing atmosphere that crendor described and I believe that video games can often cover up bad gameplay with a good story and wrath had that in a lot of cases, it did have dailies and no they were not as mandatory but it was more dungeon grinding in the LFG for rep/badges but it was covered up by the atmosphere of you and your friends working together to get into ICC and finally take down Arthas.

In MoP/Cata we never had that, In Cata we saw Deathwing in the first patch and then he was MIA until 4.3 and we never really got the motivation to take him down, he never really felt threatening after the initial Cataclysm whereas you could not escape Arthas he was in a couple dungeons and in various quest chains throughout Northrend and other than Ulduar which was a masterpiece everything was buildup to the final battle with him.

MoP in my opinion suffers from the same problems that Cata had but worse being that there was no real lore backing to it. We arrive on Pandaria and spend the first patch helping these panda's overcome their feelings and then are left with a ton of dailies in order to get them to like us. Then 5.2 rolls around and we are sent to deal with the Thunderking who once again we never heard of before 5.0, and now we are finally returning to something with some actual lore behind it in SoO and we'll have to see how that turns out.

He's not writing a book report, he is simply voicing an opinion. Where did you get that idea?

And the content he experiences is the same as 90% of the player population. That's enough to form an opinion of WoW in general.

Maybe my analogy sucked, but I was just trying to emphasize that Crendor experienced a small portion of MoP & has built an opinion about the entire expansion from that very small sampling of the content. If all MoP had to offer was 5.1 daily quests from hell, & the 5 man dungeons, ya I would have thought this expansion sucked, but that isn't the case. Challenge modes, brawler's guild, & the world pvp/bosses are just a couple things that I have really enjoyed the hell out of & made MoP one of the more memorable expansions in my eyes.

Yea, because nobody can deny the sheer superiority of grinding dungeons with a full tabard wardrobe attached when compared to going out into the world and do dailies. I mean, come on, going out, doing dailies, being in the world.. That's not MMO at all. We all know the MMO genre just got better by mindlessly queueing and teleporting into dungeons and afk'ing in the capital in between.